We’ve seen autonomous aircraft doing everything from spraying crops to surveying wildlife, and now the Swiss air rescue organization Rega has announced a drone that’s capable of searching for and finding missing people all on its own.
The following is a guest post by talented author and self-described nerd Ryan LaDue.
The Latest Wave of Sensor Tech Could be a Game-Changer for LiDAR-Equipped UAVs
Avalanche photodiode sensors are semiconductors capable of converting photons into electrons with an extremely high level of precision. The technology isn’t as new as you might think, but accessible units used for laser range finders (as part of LiDAR systems) have only been making their way into consumer markets in recent years.
Two new autonomous aircraft concepts that promise to redefine the Air Force’s unmanned fleet are moving forward.
The latest, Skyborg, is an autonomous drone prototyping program underway at the Air Force Research Laboratory. Researchers hope to get the aircraft—expected to be cheaper than other platforms and easily replaceable—combat-ready by the end of 2023.
Air Force Acquisition Executive Will Roper revealed the program, which launched in October, at a conference in Washington last month. Skyborg must be able to autonomously take off and land, fly in bad weather, and avoid other aircraft, terrain, and obstacles, the Air Force said.
But in “The Matrix,” the landmark of liquid-action sci-fi released 20 years ago today, the artificial intelligence comes at us in a uniquely teasing, forward-tilting, who’s-that-in-the-mirror way. The movie is about a computer-company office drone, played with pinpoint charisma by Keanu Reeves, who gets tugged out of his existence by a rebel underground that unplugs him from the Matrix.
The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1956, but one way or another it has been the subject of just about every great science-fiction movie, from “Metropolis” to “Frankenstein,” from the paranoid fables of the ’50s (about brainy robots and aliens with giant noggins who were like “advanced” versions of ourselves) to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in which HAL, the computer who talks like a wounded therapy patient, displays the anger and ego of a jilted human being. And by the late ’70s and early ’80s, the Machines Who Could Think were really taking over. “Alien” featured a technologically evolved monster with the metallic jaws, the helmet head, and the relentlessness of a demonic thresher, the most sympathetic character in “Blade Runner” was a replicant, and “The Terminator” gave us a dystopia ruled by the machines, featuring a weaponized badass who was the ultimate programmed destroyer.
It may be a cliché, but drone photography really does offer a new perspective on the world.
Winners of the 2018 Aerial Photo and Video Contest from SkyPixel (an online photo-sharing community owned by Chinese drone maker DJI) show how. The pictures and videos put architecture, nature, and humanity on display from unexpected heights and angles. The resulting imagery is stunning, and might make you rethink your place in the world.
Just consider it for a second. Where are you standing or sitting right now? What would it look like if you could see yourself from a distance? What surrounds you?
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